Dream On
Page 26
However, it was at that precise moment, of course, that London’s number one demon fan appeared in front of us, newly discharged from the psychiatric hospital, without a doubt after being given the all clear for mental health by a doctor who was either as crazy as Anabel herself or had been manipulated in his dreams.
“Anabel!” I crossed my arms. “How did you get Dr. Anderson to discharge you?”
“Dr. Anderson?” Anabel raised an eyebrow. “Oh, he has nothing to do with my discharge. No, the good doctor is asleep,” she cheerfully explained. “Asleep for … well, I’m afraid it will be forever.”
“He’s dead?” I asked, horrified. I remembered Anabel’s threat at our last meeting and the way Senator Tod had disappeared without a trace. It looked very much as if Anabel had been as good—or bad—as her word. I suddenly felt icy cold.
Anabel laughed. “Oh, no! He really is asleep. And the best of it is, he thinks he’s awake.”
Oh God, that sounded kind of familiar to me. I felt goose bumps coming up all over myself.
“I’ve locked him into his own dream,” Anabel went on. “He’s been sleeping for two whole weeks now, and no one can wake him.”
“That is really…,” Henry murmured. I reached for his hand.
“Brilliant, yes,” Anabel finished the sentence for him. “I know. The doctors can’t explain what’s the matter with him. All his vital functions are working perfectly. Well, not quite all of them. He has to be artificially fed, but he doesn’t know about that. He lies peacefully in bed and thinks his life is going on as usual. He has no idea that he’s still dreaming.”
A groan escaped me. Why had we had to go this way? Why hadn’t I simply enjoyed the lovely evening, which could have given me the illusion that everything was all right, and left it at that?
Anabel gave me an understanding look. “You’re not feeling sorry for him, are you? It’s all he deserves. Unlike your sister.” She glanced at Mia’s forget-me-not-blue door and the grim figure of Mr. Wu standing outside it. “Arthur’s plans for her were really horrible. And I hope you all realize he’ll be pursuing them with more determination than ever.”
“Yes,” said Henry, sighing. “Arthur is as persistent as you are.”
“With the difference being that he does it to get revenge,” said Anabel. “He has a score to settle with me too. And I’m afraid that now I’ve been discharged from the hospital he’ll want me to pay it.”
Henry and I exchanged a glance. Was he thinking what had just crossed my own mind? That it would be a good thing if Arthur and Anabel destroyed each other?
“You’ve seen what perfect command he has over dreams now,” Anabel went on. “But I’m even better. And it would be clever of you to work with me. Together, we can keep Arthur … at bay.”
Henry’s grasp of my hand tightened. Was Anabel seriously offering to do a deal with us?
“Maybe—” she began, but the squeal of door hinges interrupted her. The sound came from Grayson’s door, which obviously needed oiling. However, it wasn’t Grayson who came out and carefully closed the door.
“Emily?” I cried incredulously. I didn’t believe it! This must be Arthur making himself look like Emily.
Emily stared at us in alarm. She looked like a child caught in the act of stealing candy. “Oh, it’s you two,” she murmured. “And, Anabel … I didn’t know that you were another…” Then she pulled herself together and assumed her most arrogant governessy expression. “Well, if you’re standing around looking stupid, maybe you can tell me where to find Grayson’s grandmother’s door.”
It really was Emily. She knew about the corridors. And she’d been in Grayson’s dream, the nasty creature! Presumably not for the first time.
“You—” I began, but Henry let go of my hand and interrupted me. “Mrs. Spencer’s door? Turn left twice, then right—at least, that’s where it was recently. It’s the ocher door with gold fittings. And there’s a clipped box bush in a tub outside it.”
“Oh, good. Thanks.” Emily tossed back her gleaming hair and stalked away.
Bewildered, I watched her disappear. “Why did you let her go? And what…?”
Anabel laughed again. She wound a strand of her golden hair around one finger. “Arthur is clever. He’s looking for allies who are in the same boat. All of us ought to do that. It wasn’t a bad choice to let Emily in on the secret. She may not have much imagination, but she certainly has plenty of motive. If only on account of Grayson.”
“Arthur and Emily?” I asked.
“Looks like it,” said Henry. “It makes me wonder who else we’re going to meet here.”
Anabel turned to go. “As I said, time to take a stand. Think about my offer. What is it they say? My enemy’s enemy is my friend.” She turned back to us once more and winked at me. “And it’s only just begun.”
THE RULE BOOK OF DREAMS
Would you like to visit your friends in their dreams? No problem—the rules are easy.
1. You need something personal belonging to the person you want to visit. When you go to sleep, you must have it somewhere on your body. (So it’s best to choose something small, not a bicycle or anything like that, which would make it crowded in your bed. And uncomfortable.)
2. In the dream, you must look out for your own personal dream door—only you know what it looks like. This is a little tricky, because only when you touch the door in your dream will you realize that you are in a state known as lucid dreaming.
3. Now it’s up to you: Will you dare to go through that door? It will take you into the corridors into which all the dream doors of everyone in the world lead. There are countless passages and branching corridors, so be careful not to lose your way. And take good notice of what your door looks like!
4. Next you must find the door of the person you want to visit. Although dream doors often change their places, those of the people closest to us are usually near our own. And generally they reflect the true characters of their owners—so now you will find out how well you really know your friends.
5. When you have found the right door, you sometimes have an obstacle to overcome. Many people’s subconscious minds feel a need to protect their doors from intruders. If you know your friend well, however, you will probably get through the door easily enough. It is different if the dreamer is protecting his or her own door deliberately, something that I would recommend you do as well while you are about it. Unfortunately we never know who else is roaming the corridor, and I don’t suppose you want uninvited guests in your dreams, do you?
6. In your friend’s dream, and also in your own, you can take on any shape you like. If you’re really good at it, you can even make yourself completely invisible. However, you can also appear as yourself and do all the things that you wouldn’t dare to do awake in daytime. As a rule, the other person won’t remember anything about the dream on waking; we remember only a small part of our dreams. And go carefully: if the other person wakes while you are in his or her dream, it will be uncomfortable. The dream collapses, and you fall into a kind of black hole and won’t be able to breathe until you are awake again yourself.
7. Of course it’s not very nice to spy on someone’s dreams in secret—it’s better for you and your friend to meet in the corridor and decide whose dream to visit. The best of it is that in a dream you can travel anywhere, to any place in the world, and you can even think up places that don’t really exist. You can do simply anything.
8. Have fun! But don’t overdo it: sleep is not very refreshing while you are having lucid dreams, and if you do it all night, you could drop off to sleep in school and dribble on your math book—and no one really wants to do that.
9. Oh yes, and if you happen to meet Anabel or Arthur, run for it as fast as you can.
LOTTIE’S ALL-THE-YEAR-ROUND COMFORT VANILLA CRESCENTS
You will need:
1 stick plus 6 tablespoons softened butter
Scant ½ cup sugar
1 vanilla pod
; 1¾ cup flour
Scant ½ cup ground almonds
After baking:
¼ cup confectioner’s sugar
¼ cup of vanilla sugar (optional)
These ingredients will make about 40 small vanilla crescents.
Heat the oven to 375° F. Cream the butter and sugar together until the mixture is smooth. Slit the vanilla pod lengthwise, scrape out the inside of it, and add to the butter mixture. Sift in the flour, add the ground almonds, and work it all together. (Using your hands is the best way.) Form the dough into a ball, wrap it in foil or plastic wrap, and let it rest in the fridge for an hour. (Leave out this stage only in an emergency.) Then roll the dough into a sausage shape and cut into pieces about one inch wide. Shape the little pieces into crescents and put them on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
Bake the crescents on the middle rack for 10 minutes, until light brown. Mix the confectioner’s sugar and vanilla sugar (if using), and sprinkle over the hot crescents. Let them cool entirely on the baking sheet; these cookies are very fragile.
Then feed them fast to everyone in need of comfort, along with friendly remarks like “Everything will be all right.” (Or you can put them in a tin where they will keep crisp, and they can be eaten all week to comfort people.)
Have a good time!
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Liv Silver, goes on having lucid dreams
Mia Silver, Liv’s younger sister, has no idea what goes on in her dreams
Ann Matthews, Liv’s mother
Lottie Wastlhuber, Liv and Mia’s German au pair
Ernest Spencer, wants to marry Ann
Grayson Spencer, Ernest’s son, twin brother of Florence
Florence Spencer, Ernest’s daughter, twin sister of Grayson
Charles Spencer, Ernest’s brother, dentist
Mrs. Spencer, also known as the Boker, resembles Snow White’s wicked stepmother thirty years on
Henry Harper, likes dreaming with Liv, most of the time, anyway
Milo Harper, Henry’s younger brother
Ronald Harper, Henry’s father
B, a naked woman in a whirlpool
Biljana, lingerie model and Henry’s father’s girlfriend
Arthur Hamilton, ex-friend of Anabel Scott, Henry, and Grayson
Persephone Porter-Peregrin, has decided to be Liv’s best friend
Anabel Scott, Arthur’s ex-girlfriend, has been in a psychiatric hospital since the end of Book 1
Emily Clark, Grayson’s girlfriend, kindred spirit of Mrs. Spencer
Senator Tod, a man who talks in anagrams
Princess Buttercup, the family dog
Spot, the Spencers’ cat
Mr. Snuggles, now kindling, formerly a topiary peacock
And of course Secrecy …
Brief guest appearances by: Sam, Emily’s younger brother, and his girlfriend, Itsy (whose real name I’m afraid we don’t know); a waiter (not surprised by anything); Mrs. Lawrence, the French teacher (surprised by a lot of things); Eric and Gabriel, lunchtime friends in school; Jasper Grant (staying abroad this time); Mr. Wu (a genuine hero, makes only a short appearance); Amy Harper (Henry’s little sister, very cute); and various animals (not at all cute, but disgusting, poisonous, eight-legged, or prickly, and hopefully locked into the realm of dreams forever. But who can tell?).
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Kerstin Gier is the New York Times–bestselling author of the Ruby Red trilogy and Dream a Little Dream, the first book in the Silver trilogy. Her books have been translated into twenty-five languages. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Tittle-Tattle Blog
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Tittle-Tattle Blog
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Tittle-Tattle Blog
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Tittle-Tattle Blog
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Tittle-Tattle Blog
On That Same Night …
The Rule Book of Dreams
Lottie’s All-the-Year-Round Comfort Vanilla Crescents
Cast of Characters
Author’s Note
Copyright
Text copyright © 2014 by Kerstin Gier
Translation copyright © 2016 by Anthea Bell
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Gier, Kerstin, author.|Bell, Anthea, translator.
Title: Dream on / Kerstin Gier; translated from the German by Anthea Bell.
Other titles: Zweite Buch der Traèume. English
Description: First American edition.|New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2016.|Series: The Silver trilogy; book 2|Originally published in Germany in 2014 by Fischer Verlag GmbH under the title Das zweite Buch der Traèume.|Summary: “Romance, secrets, and new dream-world dangers follow Liv Silver into Book II of The Silver Trilogy”—Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015026290|ISBN 9781627790796 (hardback)|ISBN 9781627796552 (ebook)
Subjects:|CYAC: Dreams—Fiction.|Demonology—Fiction.|Supernatural—Fiction.|Schools—Fiction.|Love—Fiction.|London (England)—Fiction.|England—Fiction.|Horror stories.|BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Love & Romance.|JUVENILE FICTION / Fantasy & Magic.|JUVENILE FICTION / Horror & Ghost Stories.
Classification: LCC PZ7.G3523 Ds 2016|DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015026290
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First American hardcover edition 2016
eBook edition May 2016
Originally published in Germany in 2014 by Fischer Verlag GmbH under the title Das zweite Buch der Traüme.
eISBN 9781627796552